RJ, well the Wall Street Journal looked at it but I would not say they investigated it. CNN asked a bunch of experts their opinion. You would think some journalist would really delve into the facts but If they have I havent seen it.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wsj.co ... 1583349777

Ricky, it is important to find out happened. Because the effects have been catastrophic and China needs to take steps to prevent something similar happening again. The Wall Street Journal did note that the level 4 lab in Wuhan was done by a military contractor...

If it did come from a lab...should China be financially responsible at least to some degree? First SARS...and now COVID-19. At the very least China needs to take strong steps to prevent a third event. And if they wont, I think sanctions might be an option.

Freeman:

Ricky, it is important to find out happened. Because the effects have been catastrophic and China needs to take steps to prevent something similar happening again. The Wall Street Journal did note that the level 4 lab in Wuhan was done by a military contractor...

If it did come from a lab...should China be financially responsible at least to some degree? First SARS...and now COVID-19. At the very least China needs to take strong steps to prevent a third event. And if they wont, I think sanctions might be an option.

I fully agree. Both China and the US need Inspector Generals. That Ricky doesn't care about this speaks volumes about his objectivity.

freeman3

Ricky, it is important to find out happened. Because the effects have been catastrophic and China needs to take steps to prevent something similar happening again

.

Since China was majorly affected by Covid 19, it seems to me that they are motivated to do just that...They killed a lot of Chinese and disrupted the Chinese economy and the economies of their greatest trading partners after all...
There are a fair number of international scientists still in China with access to the research being done...and I'm confident we'll eventually learn more. Without getting hysterical and flinging around baseless accusations or settling on conspiracy theories.

What I find frightening is that, contrary to all of the actions China took to share and cooperate - there is a conspiracy theory level of conjecture about the origins. That is, an implausible theory advanced with little evidence to support it, and tons of evidence that disclaims it.

The 2009 H1N1 influenza virus (referred to as “swine flu” early on) was first detected in people in the United States in April 2009. No one ran around calling it the Yankee flu or the Mexican flu. No one in China advanced the theory that the virus had been leaked from a US research lab.
The reason this is called by some the Wuhan flu, and the theories that there is an "investigation" into whether it got started because of a leak from lab study OR that it was part of research into weaponized germs... is because it distracts from the lack of preparation and poor response.

Other than China and WHO scientist in Wuhan there really is no one investigating the origins of the virus. In the US? No one. Because the people yelling the most don't really care so much, its about the noise and the blame shifting..
I think, after scientists in and around Wuhan have done careful patient work we may learn more about the origins of the virus. Perhaps not. We still only know so much about Mers and Sars..... and really all virus transmission. But all the conspiracy level noise isn't going to help that cause OR help cooperation around the world. Which is vital in an interconnected world.

The US is a particularly rich space for the birth and growth of conspiracy theories. Anti vaxxers flourish in the US. The Red Scare . UN Black Ops helicopters. A US President born in Kenya.
Here's a few more....
https://www.insider.com/popular-conspir ... tes-2019-5

What is it that Americans give into nonsense and hysteria so easily? By the way, the French knew this characteristic well. In WWI it was known that the "Spanish Flu" started in army camps in Kansas or Boston. However the French didn't want to discourage the doughboys in France who were dying at an appalling rate in their training camps, so they came up with the myth that it was a Spanish Flu and not the Yankee Flu.

I see that Ricky gave up arguing and resorted to essentially ad hominem attacks. Nice. His communist heroes get questioned and he cant stand it. And that it is all I was really doing was to ask questions.

By the way, something was tugging at my memory. An ESPN anchor died in December from pneumonia at age 34 from pneumonia. Was that COVID-19? If so it got here a lot earlier than we thought.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.co ... porter-die

freeman3

I see that Ricky gave up arguing and resorted to essentially ad hominem attacks. Nice. His communist heroes get questioned and he cant stand it. And that it is all I was really doing was to ask questions.

really? You have a cartoon impression of China.

Freeman3

Ricky, it is important to find out happened. Because the effects have been catastrophic and China needs to take steps to prevent something similar happening again

.
You actually believe that China isn't interested in preventing viral out breaks? Why? Other than some cartoonish image of what life in modern China is actually like and how people actually interact with their government. Here's a thought; they all get health care at no cost; and for most of them its good quality health care.

And if a viral epidemic occurs a responsible government, worried about the lives of their citizens, would act exactly as China did. A nation worried about the epidemic becoming a pandemic would share information about the viral out break. Which China did. (They sequenced the genome and published it in record time. South Korea had a test 48 hours later. The US? 8 weeks.)

Right now, the conservative media are doing all they can to deflect from the actual causes of the high per capita death rate in the US. Consequently they offer up scenarios involving nefarious Chinese activity with no evidence... They simply state ; "the chinese are making up numbers". Balls.There are foreign scientists in Wuhan who refute this, and those making the claims have nothing to offer. (This in a nation where the President didn't want an infected cruise ship to dock because it would make the numbers worse in the US)

China are being blamed even though they provided a warning and demonstrated an effective way of dealing with the virus. Countries that dealt effectively with the warning, like Czechia and Austria and Norway are already slowly returning to normal.
Countries that refused to deal responsibly are paying a higher toll; including economically.

Conservative media are attacking the modelling that forecasts the range of infections and deaths.... blaming the models for the economic consequences of a lock down .... and trying to claim that because the death rate is lower so far ... that the lock down wasn't really required. (Logic Along the lines of no one gets measles anymore so why get a vaccination...)

China need to regulate wet markets and improve sanitary conditions. But I think the have the resolution to do so, and actually affect change. Holding them to account on this is valid.
But you have no evidence beyond conspiracy level musings to suggest that China has acted nefariously.
If they wanted to harm , why are they donating so much medical supplies to other nations? (Besides replying in kind to those nations that sent help to them in January.)

Never mind. Any beneficial discussion is over once you start labeling other people's contentions instead of responding to them with some kind of argument. I note that RJ convincingly refuted your contention that China was transparent about the virus.

Ricky:

freeman3

I see that Ricky gave up arguing and resorted to essentially ad hominem attacks. Nice. His communist heroes get questioned and he cant stand it. And that it is all I was really doing was to ask questions.

really? You have a cartoon impression of China.

Now that's funny.

And I thought he had a cartoon impression of the religious!

CNN headline: US Intelligence investigating whether virus came from lab...

"CNN headline: US Intelligence investigating whether virus came from lab.."

These accident theories – and the lab-made theories before them – reflect a lack of understanding of the genetic make-up of Sars-CoV-2 and its relationship to the bat virus,” said Vincent Racaniello, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Columbia University in New York.
“If someone had that virus in the lab, and say it escaped, it would not have been able to infect humans – the human Sars-CoV-2 has additional changes that allows it to infect humans,” he said, adding that the bat virus would have had to circulate, and evolve, for a number of years before mutating enough to be able to infect people.

They also said there were WMDs in Iraq ...

You cite this expert as if that's it, end of story. I doubt he has enough information. Does he know what the viruses looked like in the lab? No, he does not. It's not like these mutations have a sign they say valid for humans only. Washington Post did a story indicating that your great lab was not so great. Also, it was known that the viruses being studied could interact with a human receptor. There is no certainly here that the lab was the culprit. But it was always ridiculous to exclude the lab when there was a lack of certainty regarding any theory. .

https://jonathanturley.org/2020/04/15/r ... nt-page-2/

There is new information coming out that bats were not sold in the market. Bats do not live in cities. So...why did this originate in Wuhan? That's the central conundrum that is almost impossible to answer. Then you have the lab there studying bats with SARs viruses right there.

freeman3 wrote:There is new information coming out that bats were not sold in the market. Bats do not live in cities. So...why did this originate in Wuhan? That's the central conundrum that is almost impossible to answer. Then you have the lab there studying bats with SARs viruses right there.

Yeah … it's interesting to me that this has been picked up by conservative media (Fox, New York Post, I'm sure others) but not yet fully reported in, for lack of a better term, main stream media. I'm glad that Freeman is looking at this based on the evidence.

freeman3

You cite this expert as if that's it, end of story. I doubt he has enough information. Does he know what the viruses looked like in the lab? No, he does not. It's not like these mutations have a sign they say valid for humans only

This is your comment after reading this?

These accident theories – and the lab-made theories before them – reflect a lack of understanding of the genetic make-up of Sars-CoV-2 and its relationship to the bat virus,” said Vincent Racaniello, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Columbia University in New York

.

Yes. He knows viruses...

Here's more from people who know viruses...

Kristian Andersen, an associate professor of immunology and microbiology at Scripps Research, and his colleagues looked at the genetic template for the spike proteins that protrude from the surface of the virus. The coronavirus uses these spikes to grab the outer walls of its host's cells and then enter those cells. They specifically looked at the gene sequences responsible for two key features of these spike proteins: the grabber, called the receptor-binding domain, that hooks onto host cells; and the so-called cleavage site that allows the virus to open and enter those cells.

That analysis showed that the "hook" part of the spike had evolved to target a receptor on the outside of human cells called ACE2, which is involved in blood pressure regulation. It is so effective at attaching to human cells that the researchers said the spike proteins were the result of natural selection and not genetic engineering.

https://www.livescience.com/coronavirus ... n-lab.html

You seem to worship experts as if you just point to an expert and viola! there's the truth. I am a lawyer. I deal with experts all of the time. Experts are human beings--they have all the biases, prejudices, and others flaws associated with being such. Their knowledge doesnt prevent them from speculating about things they cant be possibly be sure of. There are a lot of gray areas in knowledge and I can tell you a lot of experts in lawsuits make a lot of money by interpreting those gray areas to suit the interests of those who pay them. One bias that I noted right away here is the reluctance to criticize their Chinese scientific counterparts.

Speaking of bias, you chose the South China Morning Post. That is a newspaper known to have a pro-Chinese bias. In fact, probably even essentially a newspaper that does the state's bidding. This is important because they have the power to cherry pick which researchers who give then opinion that suits what they want.

Do these researchers really know the rate of mutations in these viruses? SARs viruses were already known to have the ability to grab on to that receptor in humans. CoVID-19 is just better at it.This was a sloppy lab. There could have been multiple jumps from bats to humans. Or maybe it happened months ago in Wuhan from the lab and it took that long for the virus to adapt to humans. Or maybe they tinkered with the virus to see if it could be weaponized. All this stuff is hazy and vague. The critical facts--that there were no bats sold at the market and bats dont live in cities--are not vague and they are the ones you ignore. As do the researchers. A researcher needs to explain those facts.